Mayumi Tanaka

Mayumi Tanaka, born in Tokyo, is the Japanese voice of Krillin, and she has played Goku's best friend since the two of them first trained together under Master Roshi on the Kame House island. Krillin is one of the hardest characters in Dragon Ball to cast well. He is a grown man who sounds like a kid, a powerful fighter who constantly gets outclassed, a comic relief character who still needs to sell some of the most serious emotional beats in the series. Tanaka threads all of that through a single performance that has remained consistent for decades.

She also voices Yajirobe, the sword-wielding, senzu-hoarding glutton who lives on Korin Tower, which means she has voiced two completely different comic sidekicks in the same show without either of them ever sounding like the other. Across the original Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, Dragon Ball GT, Dragon Ball Z Kai, and Dragon Ball Super, her Krillin is the emotional anchor fans return to whenever Goku needs a reminder that the stakes are personal.

Tanaka's Krillin carries some of the heaviest scenes in Dragon Ball Z. On Namek, it is Krillin who witnesses Frieza murder Dende and then gets killed himself when Frieza explodes him mid-air, a death that triggers Goku's first Super Saiyan transformation. The pain in Tanaka's voice in that sequence is a big reason the moment still lands so hard. She also voiced his quieter triumphs: his friendship with the Ox-King's daughter, his unlikely romance with Android 18, the birth of his daughter Marron, and his reluctant return to combat during the Buu saga and the Tournament of Power in Dragon Ball Super.

Outside Dragon Ball, Tanaka is a household name in Japan as Monkey D. Luffy, the straw-hatted captain of One Piece, a role she has held since the anime's debut. She won the Kids and Family Award at the 7th Seiyu Awards in 2013, an honor voted on by the children who grew up hearing her voice come out of some of their favorite characters. Between Krillin and Luffy alone, she has probably done more to shape modern Shōnen Jump anime than any other single performer.

Krillin is one of the only non-Saiyan characters to stay relevant across every era of Dragon Ball, and Tanaka's loyalty to the role is a big part of why. Every time Krillin steps out of retirement to help Goku, whether against Majin Buu, in the Universe 6 tournament, or during the Tournament of Power, it is Tanaka in the booth bringing him back. Even when the power scaling leaves him hopelessly outmatched, she plays him with enough conviction that nobody in the audience ever wants him off the screen.

For fans of the Japanese dub, Krillin is inseparable from Tanaka's voice, warm and exasperated and stubbornly brave. She has spent a lifetime making one of Dragon Ball's most human characters feel exactly that: human.